This is about Expert credibility in climate change by Anderegg et al.. Which tells us what we already know: that there aren’t many “skeptics” and that most of them aren’t much cop. Or in their more measured prose:

we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

The usual suspects whine about it – see e.g. Curry in Science who in the std.unthinking style says “This is a completely unconvincing analysis”. Even RP Jr is scaremongering about blacklists. How dull. This is apparently the std.septic excuse for not being published: not that their papers are crap, but the nasty Man in charge of the system won’t let their stuff through. Which is utterly implausible when you consider that stuff like Schwartz got published.

Anyway, the list of scientists by Stuff whch the paper is based on is available so there is scope for fun. I think we (which is to say: Blog Science) should be analysing the categorisation – but that will take time, so Later (e.g. being on Morano’s list doesn’t make you a septic, nor does beig in LS’s awful book; meanwhile, what does NPFhost mean?). For now, lets look at authors by cites: JA is at #1641 (about half way down) and I’m at #1338. Ha!

James, you forget to add the amazing fact that W. has done so notwithstanding a lack of any papers written with RP Sr., the veritable fountainhead of charity co-authorships (coming and going AFAICT). I’m implying nothing about you, of course. :)

Can I say that I’m surprised at the lack of Quaternary/paleo people on the list. I can think of loads of people who should be there but aren’t (including me of course, which means this could all be sour grapes!).

On the subject of Japanese women, I would say there is at least one notable one missing, but as she has just been asked to be a lead author thingie for the next IPCC, this should get fixed when these numbers are updated… although, being a competitive geek, I’ve checked, and my H-index is currently higher than hers! ;-)

1) should the signed lists you use to classify UC types go back to 1992? People change, after all. (my conclusion: maybe not. Maybe Pielke Sr. shouldn’t be there)

2) Does google scholar have limitations in collecting citations? (my conclusion: probably does, so the study might have had somewhat different results if they had access to papers not covered because they precede GS records)

3)Does the study “remove nuance” in opinion. (Certainly does)

And then there’s the crap and nonsense about “blacklists”.

And I think you have to make a further distinction about some of these perhaps real flaws in the study. Specifically, are you dumping on the study because it is a citation study per se, or are you dumping on it because its a bad citation study?

Its been a long time since I was involved in learning about citation studies, but this one seems about par for the course, which means there are LOTS of ways it might be more rigorous if the raw data was better, but it ain’t so there you go. The authors are at pains to indicate that this is a conservative extension of the extant literature.
Nevertheless, from some perspectives, these things are all crap.

Mind you, correct 1) and 2) and 3) in another paper and I bet the results are the same.

So Pielke Jr. is whining that his father has been “blacklisted”. Gee, I wonder if he had such words for Senator Inhofe and Marc Morano, who put Pielke Sr. in their own skeptics list, and who’s name is mentioned in several other places. Perhaps he should start there first.

I used to think the Pielkes had genuinely nuanced positions. I’m not so generous these days. It’s mostly concern trolling. They’re not contrarians, but they spend nearly all their time praising contrarians and bashing the other 97-98%. There’s a certain niche for that.

The Morano/Inhofe list wasn’t used to compile the skeptic list in the PNAS study, despite what RP Jr says in his post. He basically admits as much in the comments, although he can’t quite spit out the words, and refuses to make a correction to the the main post.